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So it seems to me that cd/dvd drives are heavy and costly to ship. Also, they aren't worth much. I know you purchase the boards so my question is...what about the other components? Are they of value? I will attach pics of a couple I took apart already. Thanks for any help.

You pretty much have the jist of it.
Pis 2 and 3 are the board in question (cd board).
The metal chassis is light iron (scrap yard), there's a small drive motor there (scrap yard) and a low grade board that the motor is attached to (not worth shipping). On some older models, the drive shaft can be brass, snap one in half to be sure, usually these days it's like a coated plastic.
And there you have it.

I got to the point where I was already shipping several things on a pallet that I just included the whole drives I had to save me the time of tearing them down. If you have the time, and nothing else to do, might as well tear them down.

When I have the time:
I pull the motors off those boards in the first picture; use a pair of pliers to grab the sides and twist clockwise and counterclockwise and cw and ccw until it pops off, don't pull or try to pry under the motor.

The logic boards, pull the ribbon cable off, older models may have a small brass or copper heatsink on one or more of the chips that you can also pull off. Newer models may not have all the necessary chips to get CD board grade.

The bulk of what's left is steel as noted by thearchivebooks. I usually pull the two motors and the laser assembly. The motors can both have brass in them and the laser assembly:

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort